


Truth in Hearts That Perish

by RiceVermicelli



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy/Booker mostly mentioned, Booker admits he's an asshole, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Booker/Joe mostly implied, F/M, Historical Homophobia, M/M, historical racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:15:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25717915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiceVermicelli/pseuds/RiceVermicelli
Summary: Joe attempts to set some things straight. Booker is thoroughly twisty.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	Truth in Hearts That Perish

**Author's Note:**

> This started out lighthearted, and then took a hard left turn for the feelings. It is really hard to write anything like a happy ending for Booker, when the poor guy has so much going on, but since I fully believe that he deserves happily ever after, I have done my best to at least point him in a correct approximate direction.

Three out of four immortal mercenaries don’t read. At least, not for fun. They _can_ read, in dozens of languages each, some of them long dead. But they learned it late in life - Andromache was into her third century - and they don’t enjoy it. Booker feels fortunate that Joe came into immortality with a decent understanding of Arabic numerals, and dinned them conscientiously into the others. It’s one of the unexpected gifts of the universe. 

(As the universe provided Nicolo di Genova with the love of his eternal life, so did it contemplate Sebastian Le Livre and give him... immortals who could already do arithmetic. And numbered Swiss bank accounts. Booker wonders if he’d have been happier with a love of his own life, but he taught three small boys to subtract before he died. He can imagine what would happen if he tried to drag Andromache the Scythian out of the hayloft by her shirt collar to make her sit for lessons. Or if she threw a slate at him. Also, he is really sure he could not field a mercenary team - immortal or otherwise - without the bank accounts.)

In any case, his friends do not read for fun, and they went very thoroughly off all things English in the mid-fifteenth century, for reasons that Booker understands to have been compelling. Therefore, when Booker walks into the living room of a hotel suite and finds Joe flipping idly through a copy of _What Ho, Jeeves_ , he suspects a trap.

“Where are the others?” he asks.

“They went shopping,” Joe says, still pretending to read. “Andy’s boots were wearing out, and Nicky found a military surplus store with fingerless gloves in stock.”

“So it could be days.”

“Like you in a bookstore. Tell me, brother,” Booker feels the trap spring, “why are we still renting three bedroom suites?”

Booker chooses to misunderstand. “Because Andy and I hate walking in on you two going at it on the floor.”

Joe puts the book down to roll his eyes at him. “You know what I mean.” He says.

Booker does know. But he wants to make Joe say it. He picks up an apple from the complimentary fruit bowl, and examines it for spots. “Not really.” 

“We have noticed that you and Andy seem…” Booker almost holds his breath, waiting to see what word Joe will choose, and in what language. Screwing? Fucking? In love? “...lighter.”

“Nicky deputized you to ask if we’ve lost weight?”

Booker is pretty sure Joe is regretting that Booker is the one by the fruit bowl.

“Knocking boots.” Joe growls. “He wants me to ask if you think you’re really being all that subtle, because we are sure you are definitely fucking.”

“What of it?”

“Indeed!” Joe bounces to his feet, and starts pacing. “What of it, man? What are you doing? What is your plan here?” He looks at Booker, for a moment. “Would you make a plan here? We couldn’t be happier for you, and we’re worse than you are at pretending that nothing is happening. Tell us what you want, please, because Nicky is a hair and a half from ambushing you with a three tier cake and a case of champagne.”

Booker has a horrible thought. “Is Nicky trying to have this conversation with Andy right now?”

“Oh hell no. If we have learned one thing in the last five hundred years, it is not to ask Andromache about her love life. We’re asking you.”

“I can’t just be a fling?”

“It’s been going on for nearly a decade. And there aren’t flings between immortals. You know that.”

He does know. He’s always known.

“It isn’t love,” he says. It sounds hollow, and Joe isn't fooled. “It isn’t _that_ love. It’s not what you and Nicky have.”

He would stop talking here, he would walk away, but Joe has locked eyes with him, and is still asking questions. “What is it, then?”

“It’s…” Booker hesitates. “It’s nothing. It is absolutely, literally nothing. It’s as small and as invisible as I can make it, and please, friend, it is going to stay that way.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember when I met you?”

“Are you changing the subject?”

“Can I? I would love to.”

“No. I remember when we met you.”

“I’d been dreaming about you for a long time by then. Years and years, and have you thought that through? Do you remember what you and Nicky were doing for most of that decade?”

“It was just like any other decade. ...Oh.”

“Yes. I got quite a clear picture.”

“That must have been disconcerting.”

“And intrusive.”

“I’m so sorry, I…”

“Don’t be. I used to think of you two as the Arab and the Sodomite.”

Joe considers this. “You were a jackass.”

“I hope I’ve recovered. But I’m still dreaming of Quynh.”

Joe is genuinely aghast. “I had no idea! Brother!” He takes Booker’s face in his hands. “We hoped, if you met enough of us…”

Booker shakes his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“You don’t wake up.”

“You don’t hear me wake up. And I won’t have Andy hear me, and I won’t… parade her past her drowning lover that way. So this thing she and I are having, it is very small, very slight. I am nothing. I will be nothing. One day, we’ll rescue Quynh, or she’ll stay dead, and then maybe, _maybe_ there will be choices to be made. But not now.”

Joe leans his forehead against Booker’s. So close, so familiar. “It isn’t right, Book. It’s not supposed to be this way.”

Booker puts his arms around Joe. “I know.” His eyes are wet, and there’s nothing else he can say. 

“We tried everything,” Joe says, “but we didn’t even have a decent lead. We couldn’t begin…”

Booker puts a finger across the other man’s lips. “I know. If I thought anything had changed, I would be sourcing diving equipment. And if I thought there was a way to help her die, I would do anything to make it happen. Not for me. She’s in so much pain, Joe.”

Joe leans his head back, brings his arms around on top of Booker’s. There is a hesitant step sideways. “I don’t just think we’re meant to find each other,” Joe says. “I think we’re meant to be in pairs.”

“Really?” Asks Booker, aware that he is being herded down onto a sofa, and that “pairs” is maybe not quite what’s happening right now.

“Yes. I think we’re meant to sustain each other. Whatever power that made us, I think, it intends that.”

“So why are you and Nicky the only ones who were made together?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a very great power that makes us, or perhaps it would make more.” Joe shrugs. “It made Andromache and Quynh far apart, but they found each other eventually. Lykan… I think making Lykan unpaired was a mistake, and that’s why he didn’t last. Maybe Nicky and I were a lucky experiment. After Quynh, maybe you were the first chance that power had to make another.” 

Joe looks him in the eyes for a moment before dropping his head, and kissing Booker’s collarbone, right above the collar of his shirt. 

“Does Nicky know that you're doing this?” Booker has asked that question each one of the half a dozen times that he and Joe have fallen into bed, and the answer is always the same.

“My soul is as clear water to the man I love.”

“I don’t want you to comfort me,” he says. 

“Too bad. I couldn’t care less what you want, brother. I’m not demanding to make love to you now, I’m making a promise. For both of us. We’ll be here for you, Nicky and I. We’ll sustain you if you need it. And we won’t tell Andromache.”

Booker breaks a little then, his breath ragged, slumping towards Joe’s shoulder. This is the safest place in the world for tears, and Andy will be gone for hours. Joe’s hands are warm on his back, stroking his hair. Booker sinks his own hands into Joe’s dark curls. “I’m not a casualty. You don’t have to carry me.”

“Of course not, dear heart.”

“This has been a harder talk than I expected.” Booker tilts his head away just enough to see Joe’s face. “You could be a little demanding.”

Joe can, and he does.


End file.
